The Basswood Island Quarry, otherwise known as the Bass Island Brownstone Quarry, is located at the south end of Basswood Island. In 1854, a group of investors from St. Paul, Minnesota and Kentucky originally purchased the land on which the quarry eventually opened. Each of the four original investors owned one-fourth of the land. In 1868, George Becker of St. Paul sold his one-fourth interest to Alanson Sweet, a stone mason from Milwaukee. Eventually, two other Kentucky investors sold their holdings to the Bass Island Brownstone Company. Sweet, of the Bass Island Brownstone Company, began quarry operations in 1868. This was in response to a request for a reliable building material to construct the Milwaukee Courthouse. In that year, Sweet, and the Bass Island Brownstone Company, built docks and installed machinery at the site in preparation for extraction of the stone. Because brownstone was not a common building material prior to 1868, Sweet sent samples of stone to the Smithsonian Institution for analysis and strength testing. Finding the stone to be of superior quality, the Board of Supervisors of Milwaukee chose Bass Island stone as the building material for the courthouse.
Sweet and the Bass Island Brownstone Company maintained ownership of the quarry and its operations until 1870. From 1870 until 1873, the quarry was owned and operated by Strong, French and Company. Over the course of 1870, fifteen to forty workers cleared top soil, felled trees, built quarry docks, installed machinery, including steam drills with the capacity to drill holes 3-inches in diameter and six feet deep in five minutes, and removed nearly 2,000 tons of stone for the Milwaukee Courthouse. Following the Chicago fire, the brownstone from Bass Island was noted to have withstood the fire ‘splendidly’. Where the intense head of the fire had caused fractures and melting of many other types of stone, brownstone was said to have maintained integrity, increasing the popularity of the stone exponentially. By November of 1871, the popularity of the region’s brownstone was fully realized as a market to be capitalized on. Strong, French, and Company operated the Bass Island quarry for another two seasons, and during that time, the company shipped brownstone to Chicago exclusively for the rebuilding of Chicago.
The Cook and Hyde Company operated the Bass Island Brownstone Company quarry from 1883 until 1888. As two of the largest contractors and builders using Lake Superior sandstone in the region, Cook and Hyde used their quarrying operation on Bass Island to supply their stone yards in Milwaukee and Minneapolis. In addition to furnishing stone for the Bayfield County Courthouse, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and the Germania National Bank, stone from the Cook and Hyde Company’s quarry was used to construct two well-known Milwaukee landmarks: T.A. Chapman’s Dry Goods Store in 1885 and the Plankinton Building in 1887. The only vessel known to have been built in the Apostle Islands was built on basswood Island. A two-masted scow schooner, built by C.L. Rudd in 1886, the Annie R. was used specifically to haul brownstone from the Cook and Hyde Company quarry to Washburn.
In 1881, the Superior Brownstone Company was incorporated by James H. Rogers, Freeborn C. bailey, and George K. Barr with the intention to purchase tracts of land for logging or quarrying purposes. The Company leased the land on Basswood Island beginning in 1891, and started quarrying operations later that year, shipping stone to their docks in Ashland, West Superior, and Duluth.Superior Brownstone Company maintained quarry operations on Basswood Island until the financial crisis of 1893 led to a decline in the demand for brownstone. In June of 1893 though, the stock market crashed, beginning the largest economic downturn of the century. Although a few quarries around Chequamegon Bay were able to remain in operation through the crisis, the Superior Brownstone Company reduced its working crew to 15 men at the beginning of August, and by the end of the 1893 season, had shut down operations for good.
Site Description
Today, the site lies in 7 to 20 feet of water just off the south end of Basswood Island. The site is comprised of three wooden cribs and one stone pier connecting the main crib to land.
The main crib measures 102.5 feet in overall length and 26 feet in width, and is 10 timbers in height. The crib is attached to the island by a stone pier that is now completely submerged. The pier rests in 4 to 7 feet of water and measures 158 feet in length and 50 feet wide at its widest point. The stone pier widens and flattens along the shoreline, and consists of small rocks and pebbles. No evidence of timbers or cribbing structure were extant along the stone pier, but various tools and other implements were found, including stone splitting wedges, and rods, along with a section of narrow gauge rail track measuring 16.7 feet in length on the southwest edge of the rock fall of the stone pier. Near shore, additional wedges and an iron turnbuckle were located, as well as two porcelain shards found near the near-shore cribbing. The near-shore crib is one to two timbers in height. The length of crib runs 62.0 feet parallel to shore, and four extant cross-timbers measure 2.0 to 8.0 feet in length before extending beneath an overburden of small rocks. The crib is built around a small point located at the northern end of the crib, which is made up of large rocks, boulders and tree roots.
Located 95.5 feet to the northeast of the main crib are the remains of the near-shore north crib, lying in 2 to 9 feet of water. This crib raises one to three feet from the sand and rock bottom. The crib measures 113.5 feet in overall length, with a width of 18.5 feet. A large rock fall containing numerous cut stones is located about 33.5 feet along the crib and extends into deeper water. Cut marks from the wedges used to remove the stones from the quarry can be seen on most of the stones.